


What was it all for?

by wingsfromthewater



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Does not fix or ignore, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Sad, The Magicians Season 4 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 16:26:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18528766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingsfromthewater/pseuds/wingsfromthewater
Summary: When Eliot wakes, Margo has to tell him about Q.I wrote this to help myself process my feelings about that last, stupid episode.  I was basically crying the whole time which means it's probably not particularly good writing but I feel better after having written it.Self care is about knowing if reading more sad stuff is helping you feel your emotions and deal with them or if it is just feeding the sadness monster and making you spiral.  Please, for me, ask yourself if reading sad Queliot fic is good for you right now or if you need to take a break from right now.Guys, if you're hurting about the Magicians right now, I care about you and I want you to take the best care of yourself that you can.(Also, I marked it Major Character Death because Quentin is a major character and he died.  That is the only death that I was referring to with that warning.)





	What was it all for?

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Ради чего всё это?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18547639) by [Gewi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gewi/pseuds/Gewi)



Everything hurt. He was laying in a bed. His eyelids felt heavy and sandy. He was so fucking thirsty.

Everything hurt. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, every breath painful. He was back in his body. It hurt but it was glorious. He twitched a finger and felt a hand cover his own. His heart skipped a beat. Q.

No Margo. That was Margo’s hand. 

“Bambi,” Eliot whispered and felt a squeeze of his hand. 

He fought to raise his eyelids, flinching at the bright lights. Everything was blurry and out of focus at first but his vision cleared and he could see Margo’s face.

Her bottom lip was trembling and there were tear tracks running down her face. Shit.

“Bambi, what happened?” He reached to take her hand in his own. 

Her face contorted into a painful grimace, tears welling up and streaking down her face once more. “El I…” She drew in a shaky breath.

“What’s wrong?” asked Eliot, trying to sit up, wanting to comfort her but even raising his head was an effort. “Did someone… not make it?”

Margo nodded her head, squeezing her eyes shut. Then she opened them again, staring straight in to Eliot’s eyes. 

The look on her face told him everything he needed to know. A million terrible scenarios whipped through his mind. Q with a bloody wound through his chest, Q with his neck broken sprawled on the ground, every version of every trauma he’d ever seen or heard of or thought flicked through his head, all of them inhabiting Q’s body. And in every one, Q’s lifeless eyes starting.

He was aware again of Margo, silent tears flowing down her cheeks. She raised his hand to press it against her cheek. 

“Who?” asked Eliot, knowing the answer but wanting with every fiber of his being to be wrong.

“It was Q,” whispered Margo. 

The whirlwind in Eliot’s mind stopped instantly. His jaw tensed and he felt like he was going to throw up. He swallowed hard and nodded his head once.

“Eliot, I’m so sorry,” Margo said, her voice cracking around the tears. 

Eliot turned his head to look away from her. A distant part of his mind registered that he was in the Brakebill's infirmary. 

He felt Margo’s hand brushing his hair away from his face, just as he had done for Q so many times. Q’s hair. White hot pain stabbed in to his chest. He didn’t wait this long, he didn’t fight this hard to never tuck Q’s stupidly long hair behind his ear again. He turned back to Margo.

“He could be in the library, right? Couldn’t he be waiting Penny?” His mind was searching for a solution but it was fogged by memory and emotion and pain. 

“No, El. He’s gone.” Eliot knew that if there was any chance, Margo would be fighting. She wouldn’t wouldn’t be trying to get Elliot to accept it. She would be pushing him to fight too.

“I’m never gonna get to tell him,” Eliot said in a hushed voice, realizing the truth of it as he heard the words leave his mouth.

“Tell him what?” asked Margo.

“How much I love him.” 

“Oh honey, he knew,” said Margo, leaning to kiss his forehead.

“No,” said Eliot, pushing her back. “He didn’t know. All he knew was that we spent fifty years together and then we came back and then he asked me to try and make it work. He said we had fifty years proof of concept. He put himself out on a limb for me! He was so goddamn hopeful!” Eliot’s hadn’t realized he was starting to yell until he felt the burn of it in the back of his throat. 

Eliot vaguely noticed that Margo looked shaken. Something about what he was saying or how he was saying it must be really bad to make unshakable Margo look like that. “I didn’t know,” she whispered.

“Nobody knew!” Eliot was definitely yelling now. “I couldn’t talk about it! His face when I turned him down and he just said ‘Ok’, it broke my heart. To break free, to tell you I was still alive, I had to relive my most traumatic memory. And in a lifetime of traumatic memories, t!at was the one that opened the door and brought me back!”

You can’t imagine, when I stepped back in to my body and Q was right there. And then he realized it was me. God, Margo, is that going to be my last memory of him?” 

Eliot could feel the tears coming, the tension in his throat. “He d-, he died,” said Eliot, testing the word for truth or stability and coming up empty. “He died thinking I don’t love him with everything I have!” He was yelling again, struggling to sit up, to move, to run away from the pain. 

“El, stop,” said Margo, suddenly crowding him, hands on his shoulders trying to push him down. “Stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“What does it matter?” Eliot spat the words like they were venom. He kept pushing against Margo’s hands, kicking his legs trying to get them over the side of the bed. Suddenly, Penny was there holding his legs and Josh was at his side. He was kicking and pushing and screaming. Tears were running down his face now. 

And then he was crying. No longer able to fight against his friends and the waves of pain washing over him in body lurching sobs, he collapsed back in to the bed. And then Margo was there, wrapping her arms around him while he sobbed, protecting him from the world but not able to protect him from what was inside of himself. 

Minutes or hours later, when his body just couldn’t cry any more, he lay silently on his back staring blankly at the ceiling. Margo was next to him, her head pillowed on her arm. She rubbed her hand up and down his arm, silently letting him know that she was there with him. 

Eliot turned his head to look at her. “I was going to tell him,” he said. His voice was flat and expressionless once again. "First thing when I saw him, I was going to tell him. I think I did see him, for just a second but by the time I could… I never got the chance.”

“I know,” said Margo.

“I spent so much time battling with myself, trying to make myself brave enough.” The tears began to leak from his eyes again, slower this time.

“Bambi, what was it all for?”

“I don’t know.”


End file.
